We are witnessing an era where technology is at its peak. Everything that we wish for is just a click away from us. The rise of new technology has provided the opportunity to learn something new every day using the internet and your electronic devices.
The internet can be used to access free educational sites, invest in stocks, shop online, connect with your friends, or learn any new language anytime and from anywhere. We cannot imagine our lives without our smart devices now. Life has been made easy because of all the websites and web applications that we use on our devices. But do you know what goes behind making all these websites?
There is a team of developers, testers, designers, and analysts that helps in building the website. The product once ready is made live to the users. Now comes the crucial part, the user traffic can come from any device and any browser. One user can land on the website using a laptop with chrome while another might be using firefox through their mobile device. As a business, a developer, and a tester, we need to take care of every user no matter from where they are arriving.
This is the reason why we need to test our website’s performance on multiple devices and browsers. Comparing and analyzing the behavior of your website in different browser environments is known as Cross-browser testing. In this article, we are presenting you with 5 ways through which you can perform cross-browser and devices testing. Before that let us see why it is important to perform web testing on various browsers and devices.
Why it is important to test a website on multiple browsers and devices?
In general, we test a website to determine bugs, errors, or any fault on the web page. A website undergoes various types of testing like usability testing, performance testing, integration testing, database testing, security testing, test automation, and more. After passing all these tests, the testing team has to make sure that the website is responsive and adapts to the environment.
Okay! So now imagine you have designed a well-structured and functioning website. It is working absolutely fine for the Google Chrome users but is facing some issues while being operated using Mozilla Firefox. Now the user has two choices either to wait for the site to load and stay on the website or switch to another website. Usually, people prefer the second option.
To gain the confidence of your potential customers and to add success to your website we ought to test our website on various browsers. Given below is the market share of various browsers from Stat counter.
Not just the browser, we should also be concerned about the device, operating system, and resolution as well. The latest survey of Stat counter shows that there are more mobile users (around 56.05%) than desktop users (approx. 41.52%). If you do not want to miss any customer then you have to consider all these factors as well.
Also, let us not forget about the rendering engines. Every browser uses a different rendering engine and parses the same code differently. A website when viewed using a mobile device looks different than viewed through a laptop. It should look properly aligned on all the devices. The poor interface of the website leads to a poor user experience which is not good for our website. We need to be prepared for all sorts of users. Always remember that a good website will bring good ROI for the company. This is why cross-browser and device testing is important.
Let us take a look at the top 5 ways through which we can test a website with multiple browsers and devices.
1. Real Device
Real devices mean your smartphones, laptops, and tablets. By testing on real devices we get the actual look and feel of the user. In addition to this, the comparison between the expected output and actual output seems to be more accurate when the test is being performed on real devices. The user experience is something we cannot get using any tool. It can only be analyzed when we operate the website as a user.
Your customer is going to access the web application using these real devices, so it becomes important to test the website behavior on all of them. I know some of you must be thinking, that there are numerous mobile devices and laptops available on the market. How can we test them all? The answer is quite simple.
Firstly, start with the devices that are ruling the market. Second, look for the operating systems and resolutions. For instance, you can use the latest version of the iPhone or Macbook to test your application on Safari. Or you can also choose android phones, desktops, and tablets whose market value is high in the market. These devices will help you to test browsers like chrome, edge, or firefox and operating systems like windows, Linux, etc. design your test cases accordingly.
Pros:
Here are some of the advantages of using real devices to test your website:
- User experience- This method will provide you with the most accurate user experience results.
- Accuracy- The accuracy of the results is nearly 100% while testing the website manually.
- Best Fit- When we talk about usability testing or exploratory testing, there is no match for the manual testing method.
Cons:
There are some cons of this method. They are:
- Resource utility- There is no denying the fact that it is not possible to test on every device. We cannot test all the combinations of operating systems, resolutions, and devices as well. The number of resources needed is very large and it becomes a difficult task to perform the test on every combination.
- Not reusable- As we cannot record our test, the test code that we perform is not reusable.
- Cost- If we try to perform the test on 10 mobile devices, 10 tablets, and 10 laptops only(with different operating systems). We will have to buy all the real devices and even this number will be like a big hole in the pocket.
2. Virtual system setup
A virtual system allows you to create a virtualized environment in which you can run an operating system in your application window on your desktop and it will behave like a separate computer. Inside the virtual machine, you can boot the operating system installer disc. This way the operating system will think it is running on the real device.
Whenever you want to use the operating system you can simply open the virtual machine and use the operating system on your windows system. Also, do remember that virtualization adds on to some overhead so expecting them to be as fast as the real system would be a fool’s act.
Using the virtual system setup you can use any operating system, without actually downloading and installing it onto your system. Later on, when your purpose is fulfilled you can delete the virtual machine.
Pros:
Here are some of the benefits of using the virtual system setup –
- It provides operational flexibility i.e you can operate on various instances of different operating system types.
- You can reduce the overhead by running multiple virtual machines on the same hardware.
- In case of any crash, it is easy to restore data and system states from your virtual machine instantly.
Cons:
Let us now look at the cons of using the virtual system setup-
- It cannot be as fast as the real operating system. The usability is slow.
- If there are many virtual machines working at a time, and the main physical host fails, eventually all the virtual machines that reside in the system will collapse too.
3. Cloud-based Simulators
A simulator is used to imitate another system. It can be a machine or any program that creates a virtual version of the situation. For example, take a look at the image that represents a flight simulator. Pilots practice their flight training on such simulators before actually trying their hands in the cockpits.
A cloud-based simulator works in the same fashion. It is software that is used to copy the physical and logical structure of cloud infrastructure. This infrastructure contains thousands of physical and virtual machines into a regular computer. It is the best practice to perform experiments quickly and efficiently.
Pros:
Let us take a look at the advantages of using cloud-based simulators:
- As simulators provide a virtual environment, critical situations can be investigated and detected without any risk.
- Conditions under investigation can be varied to determine the outputs of various inputs.
- There is no fear of loss of data or security.
Cons:
Let us now see the cons of using cloud-based simulators:
- Designing and implementing the whole system could be expensive.
- We need experts for this task who have a thorough knowledge and understanding. No beginner or less experienced person can take part in the process.
Cloud-based platforms like Lambda Test offers mobile emulator for browser testing that can be used to test websites and web applications with their iOS Simulator. You do not need to install or configure anything, just log in and start testing immediately.
4. Cloud-based Emulators
In my childhood, I use to play video games like Super Mario and Contra. What if I wish to play those games today. Is it even possible?
The answer is yes! It is possible using Emulators. Emulators are software program that allows a computer system to behave like another computer system just like simulators. But this time, they consider hardware too. This means you can install the PS2 emulator in your system and play all the PS2 games. It will look like the game is being played on PS2 but actually, it is played on your system and is using its resources as well.
Cloud-based emulators can be used in the same manner. The biggest advantage of using cloud-based emulators is the data lives in the cloud and we can access it from anywhere. This way you can easily test your website on various browsers and devices using cloud-based emulators.
You can also go for tools that will help you in the process. Like the one shown below. Lambda Test cloud-based emulator will help you to test your website and web apps on the latest android operating systems, devices, and browsers. It will reduce your efforts and increase your results.
Pros:
Here are some of the benefits of using the cloud emulators:
- Emulators maintain the original look, feel, and behavior of the imitated device or operating system.
- Data that is present on the cloud emulator can be accessed by any authorized person from anywhere. It maintains the security and privacy of data.
- When the original hardware or software is difficult to obtain, emulators can be used there. Emulators even provide better graphic quality than the original ones.
Cons:
The disadvantages of using emulators are:
- Emulators are not real devices. So they can never give you accurate results.
- The creation and maintenance costs of emulators are very high.
5. Cloud-based real device lab
We have already seen how we can test our web applications on real devices. Also, we have seen the various issues that can occur while dealing with real devices.
We have an alternative to that, cloud-based real devices. You can think of it as an infrastructure where we have stored thousands of devices to access them as per our needs. Emulators and simulators work fine but it fails when you want to know about the storage, battery, memory, or device processors.
This is where the real-device cloud comes into play. It can show you how the website will perform on the device and browser using its native processor, or what percent of memory will it consume.
With the Lambda Test real device testing cloud, you can test your web application or websites on an actual physical device. You do not need any internal device library to be connected to the devices.
There are thousands of devices on the cloud that will increase your device coverage. Using the Lambda Test real device cloud now you can, test your website for responsiveness, reliability, and compatibility on over 3000+ real devices.
Using this tool you can eliminate the operational cost by 50 times and increase your test execution time. Plus they keep on adding the new devices every time it is released.
Pros:
Some of the Pros of using the cloud-based real device testing lab are :
- We get all the devices in one place, this is how it is easy to access the required device.
- The issue with emulators and simulators was they didn’t have the option to represent the battery or memory usage. With the cloud-based real testing lab, this issue is solved.
Cons:
The cons that we can figure out are:
- The infrastructure is complex. It can only be handled by experts.
- As all the data is stored in the cloud, the development and maintenance cost is high.
Conclusion
We are sure by far you must have learned why it is important to perform tests on a website with multiple browsers and devices and how they can be performed. We have shared all the best things with you.
Real device testing shows you everything that you need to know while testing your application. But of course, it is not a feasible solution. Emulators and simulators are good options, they are even feasible but when it comes to battery or memory, we cannot rely on them either. The cloud-based real device testing seems to be a good option where you get the actual touch and feel of the real devices.
You can now go and try any of these techniques on your website and see the results. If you have any queries or doubts after that then don’t forget to post your query. We will be happy to help you. Thank you for reading.
Learn more about Web development and read 5 Reasons Why Cross Browser Testing Is Important.
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